Sermons and Talks, vol. 1

Seeking Heavenly Treasures

[My text is] Matthew, sixth chapter, commencing at the nineteenth verse: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”1SAT 250.1

Now, this is a very important matter to us. Who is the speaker? It is Jesus Christ. Who is He? The only begotten Son of God. Who is He? Our Saviour; One who left the royal courts of heaven, laid aside His high command in heaven, and clothed His divinity with humanity. He came to our world that humanity might touch humanity, that His long, human arm might encircle the race while His divine arm grasps the throne of the Infinite.1SAT 250.2

For our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich. What kind of riches? It was not the riches of this earth, but it was the eternal riches, the knowledge of God communicated through Jesus Christ. He consents to become man's substitute and surety; He engages to bear the penalty of the debt which man had incurred by transgression. It is He that loved us, and so loved us that He offered His life as a living sacrifice to bear the sins of a guilty world, that man should have a second probation, that man should be tested and proved and tried to see whether he will stand under the blood-stained banner of Prince Emmanuel or whether he will choose to stand under the banner of the prince of darkness.1SAT 250.3

Has He not an interest in His purchased possession? Is He not intensely interested that the people for whom He has suffered so much should be successfully carried through the warfares and conflicts of this life, that they may have that immortal inheritance that He has given His life to purchase for the human family? Then has He not a right to speak in warnings, in instruction? What weight do these words of the Son of the infinite God have with the human family? He tells you that which is for your present and eternal good.1SAT 251.1

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves”—you are working for yourselves, cooperating with God who has laid out the plan whereby you can work successfully through His grace for yourselves, to secure your own eternal happiness in the kingdom of glory. “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”1SAT 251.2

Christ has bought our hearts. Christ has bought the human intelligence. Christ has bought the reasoning powers; and Christ has entrusted us with capabilities and with powers. He does not want that we should let these powers and capabilities be employed merely in the common things of earthly substance, and lose sight of the eternal. [See 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20.] He came to our world when Satan appeared to have the human race under his control.1SAT 251.3

The Lord Jesus made our world. Everything was made by Christ. Here Christ through God created our world, and He engaged before the foundation of the world that if man that was created and in Eden should transgress the law of God, He would take the penalty of their transgression upon Himself. And He did this. Then has He no right to instruct His subjects what to do, that they shall not miss the eternal reward?1SAT 252.1

Who, I ask you of this congregation, will absorb brain, bone, and muscle for the acquisition of merely temporal advantages? Christ gave His life that we might not perish. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”1SAT 252.2

Our precious Saviour has made the world, and when He came into the world He found the great usurper there, and He came into the world that He might contest with him the possession of this earth. Therefore the battle, the conflict, was carried on right here in this world, and here He tells us that it is for our eternal interest to lay up for ourselves a treasure in the heavens. You ask, How can I do it? In Christ. When the Householder went away from His house, He gave to every man talents, to some five, to some two, and to another one. And these talents He gave them direction to employ in His service, He gave to some the property of means, to others ability, intellect—all God's gifts. We could not have any of it unless it came through Jesus Christ.1SAT 252.3

Then He tells you to use these talents to His glory. Improve them. How shall we improve them? As God gives me light, as God gives you light, as He has given you His precious Word. It is full of hidden treasures. He wants you to explore, work the field, and you will find the treasures, and you will sell everything that you might buy the field that contains the treasure. There are the jewels of truth that are to be searched for as hidden treasures.1SAT 252.4

As you find them, what then? Why, you find that there is truth, beautiful truth, jewels of truth, riches of truth, and you accept them. What do they do? They bind you by the golden links to the eternal God, for Jesus Christ came that He might link finite man with the infinite God, and connect earth that has been divorced by sin and transgression from heaven. What riches, what treasures, what love, are here revealed! It is impossible, yes, it is impossible, to conceive of the love of God that is bestowed upon fallen humanity. Well, He tells you, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Will you do it? “Ye are,” says Jesus, “the light of the world”—if you become rich in heavenly treasure, in the knowledge of the true God. You are to search for it, search that Book, the Word of God, and then you are to diffuse to others the knowledge that you have obtained. Impart the heavenly gift.1SAT 253.1

“Oh,” says one “I must attend to my farm; I must attend to the interests of my family. I cannot afford to be here, giving my interest and time and money in order that I may win souls to Jesus Christ.” Well, this shows that you do not appreciate the heavenly Gift. It shows that you do not appreciate and value the human families that Christ has estimated of such cost that He came into the world to suffer and become a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. [He was] wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.1SAT 253.2

Only think of it! No one could bear the stroke of God's justice but His only beloved Son. He came in the express image of His Father's person, one with God. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. The plan is laid out. You are not to occupy brain, bone, and muscle to the acquisition of the things of this life, and invest not in the treasures of heaven. He wants all that there is of man. He wants the whole heart.1SAT 254.1

The question is asked by the lawyer that came to Christ, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”—this very inheritance that He had been presenting to him. Well now, there stood the frowning Pharisees; there stood the rabbis; there stood the priests and the rulers of the synagogue, and they hoped to catch something from the answer that they could use, that they might condemn Christ, the world's Redeemer, the mighty Healer, the greatest Teacher that the world ever knew. Christ read their heart and their purposes, and what did He do? He turned back upon the lawyer himself the labor of answering that question. He said, “What is written in the law? How readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with”-nine tenths of your heart? two-thirds? one-half? one quarter?—“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind” [Luke 10:25-27]. This takes intellect; this takes reason; this takes education, ability; and it takes all there is of man.1SAT 254.2

But just as soon as some enter college and get a little bit of knowledge they think they know more than God. And you hear of the higher critics. Who is the Higher Critic? It is the Lord God of the universe, who has spread the canopy of the heavens above us, and has made the stars and called them forth in their order; that has created the lesser light, the glory of the moon, to come in its order and to shine in our world. And the higher critics come in. Who are they? Poor, finite man on probation to see if he will be loyal and true to God that he can stand under the blood-stained banner of Prince Emmanuel, and that he can become a child of God and an heir of heaven. Talk of the critics, the higher critics. We have God; we have his Word in its simplicity.1SAT 255.1

Jesus might have opened to the world door after door of the mysteries of science, and gratified the inquisitive mind; but did He do it? He had one object before Him, as we should have in following His example. It is to bring to the human family the divine knowledge of the Christ of God, to teach them how they may save their souls, and that they may have that life that measures with the life of God.1SAT 255.2

The salvation of man was to Him everything. He takes the world by the hand, and He places it in its proper position, subordinate, while He brings eternity that has been lost from their reckoning, in view. He leads you to behold the threshold of heaven flooded with divine glory, flushed with the glory from the throne of God, and He tells you it is for you. He tells you to strive for that inheritance that poverty cannot strip from you. He tells you to seek for that kingdom that hath foundations, that city whose builder and maker is God. That is the eternal treasure; that is the immortal inheritance. I want it.1SAT 255.3

I long for it; yes, and I am willing to spend to the last that which I shall accumulate, that I may recover souls that are ready to perish. All the value there is in money to me is to invest it in the treasures of God, that He may have meat in His house, that when missionaries are called to lift the standard in the places that know not God He shall not find an empty treasury because men spend God's money for liquor and tobacco—ten, twenty, a thousand times more in eating and in drinking these things that are taking the underpinning out from their house, which are obliterating the image of God in man, which are creating disease and infirmity and imbecility, and shortening the existence of men years, that they might [not] use their God-given life to the glory of God. Why, it is God's money. He has seen fit in His providence to open the way before me that I could have a little of His money to use for His treasury, and to carry the truth to the people that are ready to perish.1SAT 256.1

He wants us to do what? “We are laborers together with God; ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building” [1 Corinthians 3:9]. And that is what we are in the world for—not to eat and to drink and to attend horse races, and to use the holidays in idling and in gratifying self; and if we have a shilling, get on the cars and go somewhere to have a good time. There are souls to be saved. There are youth to be educated by our precept and example. The Lord is coming. The end of all things is at hand, and it is time now, as the end of all things is at hand, that we commence the work for youth; that we begin to see what we can do to gather souls to Jesus Christ. There is poverty around us; there is distress; there are the naked to clothe, the hungry to feed; and those that are thirsting for the water of life and hungering for the bread of salvation, we want to give it to them.1SAT 256.2

I will read a little farther. “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single [your discernment is of that character that it is single], thy whole body shall be full of light” [Matthew 6:22]. Do you think you will find men that are smoking tobacco, introducing a poison into their system, when nature makes the most tremendous effort to expel the intruder that it almost dies in the conflict, and if that was the terms of eternal life you would think it was a very hard condition. But it is not, thank God.1SAT 257.1

But who has instituted this? It is the devil that wants the brains of man. He wants to cobweb your faculties and your thinking forces, and he wants to send disease between the fluids and the solids of your body, that you shall not have health, and that you shall be in the slavery of a perverted appetite, an appetite which has no foundation in nature and the most difficult to break from because the enemy has woven his threads all about you to bind you to the habits which will ruin both soul and body.1SAT 257.2

Not an unclean thing is to enter the kingdom of God. I want you to think of this; and those that benumb their senses, paralyzing their reasoning by intoxicating drinks, I want you to consider they have sold their reason to the devil, and he takes possession of them soul and body; and you know what he does with them; you know that it is the attributes of Satan that walk right out in these men. Shall we make an attempt to save men? Shall we educate our children from their very babyhood to self-control? Shall we teach them the blessed, precious name of Jesus? Shall we sing to them the heavenly songs? Shall we teach them to imitate the graces of Jesus Christ?1SAT 257.3

I was riding with an Englishman, and we were in Texas. My husband was then living. We were laboring there in Texas; and [this Englishman] was smoking his pipe. My husband said, “What do you think, friend, did Christ give you an example of using your pipe? Did He lay down this example for you?”1SAT 258.1

“Oh,” he groaned, “I never regarded it in that light. No, no,” said he, “I throw this pipe away; I will never touch it again. To think of the Redeemer of the world going through the streets smoking a pipe, making a chimney of His nose! No, I never could do that again.” It seemed his sensibilities were shocked. But here, see, the devil had invented it. What for? To consume money so that the poor should not be clothed; so that the needy and the distressed might suffer for the want of food and care and house; so that the gospel should not be carried to all parts of our world.1SAT 258.2

Well, here is God's money. How much better to say, Here I see that man eating his house in liquor, eating the very substance which should go to his family, in smoking. Now you are taking this portion which my brother uses, or my brethren, and you are putting it into God's treasury. And then there is a meetinghouse to be built; here is a church to be organized; here is a company sending the Macedonian cry, “Come over and help us.” In our cities you could send scores of laborers and support them in the field if man would only sacrifice the idol of tobacco.1SAT 258.3

Professed Christians stand off in their slavery and say, I can't overcome it. No, I cannot, but through Jesus Christ you can overcome; through the merits of the blood of Christ you can sweep away this deadly evil which is corrupting our earth and corrupting our youth. And parents are giving their appetites and passions as an inheritance to their children; and they are weaker in moral power than they themselves are to resist the contaminating influence that is upon our earth.1SAT 259.1

What account will fathers have to give in the judgment? What account for the habits of liquor drinking? What accounts for the habit of tobacco using, the money consumed in lessening physical, mental, and moral power that belongs to God? All of it has been purchased by an infinite price, the price of the Son of God. You do not realize the necessity of sending light to those that are in darkness because your eye is not single to the glory of God. Your whole body is full of darkness, and you treat yourself as a slave, a slave to grant to taste and appetite that which is unwholesome and unhealthy, and which is destroying vitality.1SAT 259.2

“But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness”—if you are not observing the truth of God's Word above everything in the earth, and if you are not investing the talents that He has given you, put them out to the exchangers. Let light shine forth from you. The Master is going to require an account of you, and your whole body is full of darkness. You consume means on your body that ought to be given to the treasury of God, and you stand forth in your God-purchased nobility of character that is standing in the sight of God, written in the books of heaven as a man—a man that will overcome every pernicious habit and every pernicious practice. Now He says, “How great is that darkness.”1SAT 259.3

No man can serve two masters. If tobacco is your master, if it has brought all your forces under the control of the pernicious appetite, it is your master and you are its slave. How then can you serve your tobacco and your God, sending up the fumes of tobacco before you go into the prayer meeting so that your mind is so confused that you do not know what you are about? Why? Because the stimulant of tobacco and the stimulant of the Holy Spirit of God never combine to give meaning to inspiration in the meeting that you may give the testimony clear from the courts of heaven that God wants you to give.1SAT 260.1

“Ye are my witnesses,” says God, and God wants us by precept and example to represent Christ in our world. He represented the Father, and He left the work in our hands to attend to the needy and the distressed, and to have something to help them that they may have the blessing of relief, the necessities of suffering humanity. But if we use it up unwisely, imprudently, He will say, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, why did not you take My talent, why did you not put it out to the exchangers? Why did not you use My gift that you could double it for My service?” God wants us to win souls for Him; and then what? You are to begin to work with the talent which God has lent you, and then [use] every gift there is to the praise of heaven.1SAT 260.2

Oh, I am so thankful for a Saviour! I am so thankful for One that is mighty in power, that will help in every emergency. “Lo,” He says, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Well now, if we have Christ at our right hand to help us—how much can He help that man that is so devoted to the smoking of his pipe that he can think of nothing else? God help us to cleanse the soul temple of its impurity. God help us that we may give to God an offering that is untainted physically, mentally, and morally. Well, “no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” You see, the problem is weighed with God, and He tells the result. He requires all there is of you.1SAT 261.1

When the lawyer asked a decided question, Christ let him answer that; and what does Christ say after He had declared, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind”? He added, “And thy neighbor as thyself.” Here is [summarized] the first four commandments, which reveal the duty of man to his God. Here he must give supreme worship to God; and the next is to love his neighbor as himself. Who keeps the commandments? Who keeps them? Oh, that God would help us to see how many of us are commandment breakers, and are robbing God of the gifts, the precious gifts He has given us!1SAT 261.2

Jesus came to bring moral power to man that he might overcome every sin, that he might become conqueror through Christ. Man cannot do it of himself, but Jesus brings moral power to combine with man's human effort, that man may stand victor, on vantage ground with God. May the Lord help us that we may possess that grace and divine power, [and] be partakers of the divine nature, that we may overcome the corruption that is in the world through lust.1SAT 261.3

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” [Matthew 6:25]. Should we not educate and train our children that to preserve health, to preserve themselves with a sound mind in a sound body, is of more consequence than the gratification of adornment, or the gratification of such a variety of food and such endless preparations for the table, the spices, the pickles, the condiments, the wine, the beer drinking, and the desserts? I want to know what is the necessity of all these things?1SAT 262.1

The cook has no time to read her Bible. You say, I hire the cook. And has not the cook any soul as well as you? The cook has a soul to save, and you want to educate and train that cook to seek God in the morning, to seek Him at night, and to live so she can have a chance to read her Bible. With all the wonderful preparations for man's appetite and taste and passions for the varieties of his life, people rob God of His service. They have no time to go to their neighbors and to teach them right in the shadow of their own doors how they may love Jesus and how Jesus loves them.1SAT 262.2

This is what we are in the world for—on trial to see if we will be fit for the courts above, to see if God can honor us to become one of the heavenly family in the kingdom of glory. If we are so selfish here that we have no interest for one another to make them obedient, and to bless them with the good things that He has provided for us in this life, how will we manifest anything like unselfishness in the kingdom of glory? How will we do it? We would be wanting to snatch the crown from another's head because it is more brilliant than ours. Another would become jealous, and we should have as bad a time as when Satan set up that work in heaven of rebellion against God.1SAT 262.3

Therefore the Lord has given man a probation, and we will work out our characters as the artist takes [an image] upon the polished plate. As he takes the features of the one that wants his picture produced, the God of heaven is taking the character of every human soul of us. That character is going up to heaven, and it is produced there; it is recorded there in the book what traits of character we manifest. If we manifest the attributes of Satan, it is that character that can find no place in the heavenly courts above.1SAT 263.1

Well then, how shall we occupy our time here? As pilgrims and strangers. You have a home. Thank God for that. There are many who have none. Make that home just as pleasant, just as nice as you can, but not extravagant. You can make things very nice and very tasteful with few things. By exercising taste you can make a beautiful home. Then will you sit down and enjoy it? Here are youth who have no home. Here are orphans with no father or mother, without a home. Here is the example of horse racing and holidays, and the tobacco devotees, and the world is full of excitement and corrupting influences that are making the people as the inhabitants of the earth before the flood, whom God swept away by the waters of the flood, and as Sodom that fire came from heaven and consumed.1SAT 263.2

Now, there is work for every one to do. God calls for the talents that He has lent you, and He wants you, in the place of devoting money and time for expensive dress and for expensive adornments and for expensive houses merely for visitors, to do something different from that. They come in and you show them all about the little things that you have to take their attention. [You are] professed Christians, but never speak of Jesus; and God says to you, What saw they in thine house?1SAT 264.1

Did they see you imparting the light and knowledge of Him? Did they see you bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of God? Did they see you preparing those little ones for the crown of immortal glory? Will you place their hands in the hands of Jesus Christ? Will you educate them to meet the standard of the world, to do as the world does, to practice the maxims [of], and to follow the fashions of, this degenerate age, which are ever changing, and its mouth is always swallowing money, money, money? The poor are suffering for food, and there are youth that you could educate and train.1SAT 264.2

Our houses should be made pleasant to our children. Remove the drapery that would shut out the sunlight and the pure air of heaven lest they tarnish the beautiful pictures and the carpets. Let them tarnish them. Had they not better tarnish these than have the children obtain a street education, and imbibe the appetites and the passions of this degenerate age, which tarnish the soul and may produce a scar which can never be effaced?1SAT 264.3

Here are the human beings. The probabilities and the possibilities are before them of working out a character for the future, immortal life, so that the Lord can say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” [Matthew 25:21]. Oh, will not that fall on the ear like the sweetest music? “I was hungry, and ye fed me; I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me; I was naked, and ye clothed me.”1SAT 265.1

Jesus was abiding in the heart and in the mind. They were serving Him so perfectly that they have no idea that they have done anything wonderful. They don't know what they have done. “Inasmuch,” said Jesus Christ,” as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” I want the tobacco devotees to reckon up every week how much they devote to their idol-god tobacco. I want the liquor drinkers to reckon up what they spend for wine, brandy, and strong drinks, and then see the sum you might expend on God's purchased possession.1SAT 265.2

Jesus gave His life that these precious souls might have eternal life. “We are laborers together with God.” What sacrifice will you make? What self-denial will you practice? It may be self-denial for a time, but in the end it is the greatest blessing to soul, body, and spirit that you can experience. We have a duty to humanity. We are bound before God, if we possess eternal life, to show that we appreciate the value of the sacrifice which Christ has made, and that is to purchase heaven, that we may glorify His name upon the earth, and that we may win souls to the cross of Calvary, that we may win souls to teach them how to give their hearts to Jesus Christ, that we may represent Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ represented the love of the Father. This is our business in the world.1SAT 265.3

We are not here to please ourselves. And then our families, our children—don't say to them as I have heard many mothers say, “There is no room for you in the parlor. Don't sit on that sofa that is covered with satin damask. We don't want you to sit down on that sofa.” And when they go into another room, “We don't want your noise here.” And they go into the kitchen, and the cook says, “I cannot be bothered with you here. Go out from here with your noise; you pester me so, and bother me.” Where do they go to receive their education? Into the street.1SAT 266.1

Fathers and mothers, you have an awful responsibility lying at your door. What has made the drunkards? They are made at home. It is the neglect of teaching the children the commandments of God when they rise up and when they sit down, when they go out and when they come in.1SAT 266.2

What are the commandments of God? They are the ten holy precepts, the royal law, the holy law of God, which is the standard of character, which every soul present must meet in the judgment, notwithstanding it may be proclaimed from the pulpits of the day that God has no law. Now who believes it?1SAT 266.3

Every nation has a law; but the God of heaven has given us His law to represent His character, and there it stands. There is not one of the precepts done away. They stand immutable and eternal. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Why should anyone want to change a perfect thing? You cannot get anything more than perfect, and the law of the Lord is for us to respect and reverence and obey.1SAT 266.4

And if the inhabitants of the world had obeyed the law of God instead of hearing reiterated from the pulpits that God has no law, that God has no commandments; and if the parents should educate their children as Christ enshrouded in the billowy cloud gave the direction to Moses to give to Israel, we should not hear of the thefts, the robberies, the murders, and our jails be filled, the prisons filled with criminals because of the crime and wickedness that prevails in our world to such a fearful extent. Now we would say, Let us love God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.1SAT 267.1

Well, I will read a little farther. I want to take up some other points, but we shall have to leave them for another discourse. A few thoughts more, and I will close.1SAT 267.2

“Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” Now just as though God that places you in this world could not carry you through this world. If you are diligent, if you are patient, if you try, if you do what is fitted for you to do, and are colaborers with God, He says, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” God works for you all the time. God Himself is taking care of you. “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory [could not be compared with one of these] was not arrayed like one of these.”1SAT 267.3

He has been telling about raiment. Now, that God that puts the tints and the color upon all these things, can He not provide for us suitable clothing and comfortable clothing, neat and warm clothing? We need not practice extravagance. There are other ways for our clothing than that. Now He says, “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Well now, why not trust Him who made the beautiful lilies of the valley?1SAT 268.1

In America we have the fresh water lilies. These beautiful lilies come up pure, spotless, perfect, without a single mar. They come up through a mass of debris. I said to my son, “I want you to make an effort to get me the stem of that lily as near the root as possible. I want you to understand something about it.”1SAT 268.2

He drew up a handful of lilies, and I looked at them. They were all full of open channels, and the stems were gathering the properties from the pure sands beneath, and these were being developed into the pure and spotless lily. It refused all the debris. It refused every unsightly thing, but there it was developed in its purity.1SAT 268.3

Now, this is exactly the way that we are to educate our youth in this world. Let their minds and hearts be instructed who God is, who Jesus Christ is, and the sacrifice that He has made in our behalf. Let them draw the purity, the virtue, the grace, the courtesy, the love, the forbearance; let them draw it from the Source of all power.1SAT 268.4

When God gave Jesus, He gave us all the riches and treasures of heaven in one gift, and He says, Impart these riches to everyone that needs them. Then let us come and ask Him. Ask, and ye shall receive. Teach your children to pray from their very babyhood; teach them to lift their little voices to God in prayer. He is their Maker; He is the One that can make their hearts happy; He is One that can give them contentment; He is One that can give them virtue; He can reshape even the tendencies that have been transmitted to them by unwise parents.1SAT 269.1

God help us to feel the weight of our responsibility. Take the youth, if you have none of your own, adopt them. I had children of my own, but I did not stop there. I was traveling nearly all over the world, and yet I gathered into my house—“I have a house,” I said, “and children shall come in and enjoy it.” And I adopted child after child, and I brought some of them up to womanhood and manhood, and God has helped me in the work. When I could gain a victory (when children laid down the stubbornness of their natural tempers) not by beating them, I tried a better plan—to gain their confidence—and then I could do anything with them; and God has helped me in the work. No soul that I have taken in to train and educate has made me regret it. They have given their hearts to Jesus, and we have tried to point them to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.1SAT 269.2

I love Jesus. I love those that are found in His image, and I want to do everything in my power to help them. Next month I shall enter upon my sixty-seventh birthday, and yet I expect to issue many books yet; I expect to bear my testimony in other countries besides this, and, God helping me, I shall seek to let the light shine for others that they may see the way that they can enter the strait gate, and have eternal life. May God help us to help our children. God help us to help our neighbors. God help us in the church to let more light shine nigh and afar off to go into the byways and the highways and point souls to Jesus Christ, and show them how they can believe in God, and have His righteousness imputed to them by taking Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour.1SAT 269.3

And now I would say to every one of you, if I have introduced into this little address any ideas that you will work upon, I shall feel that I am abundantly paid; and if I have helped to point the eye to Jesus Christ, I will praise Him for that. You want to educate your children to praise God. You want to educate them to bring their little offerings to God. You want to educate them not to make themselves a center and a core, and all the gifts of the parents be lavished upon the children. God's cause calls for money. God's cause calls for means that you may carry the light into the regions that are beyond. And then I beg of you, for Christ's sake, to let the treasury be supplied that God may have meat in His house.—Manuscript 43a, 1894. (MR 900.42)1SAT 270.1